#ThrowbackThursday: Apple Siri Predicted Decades Ago

Apple has done a pretty good job of introducing products that redefine the future of technology, but the unearthing of this commercial from the mid-90’s leads us to believe that they’ve employed time-traveling magicians to work in the caves of their Cupertino offices. This presentation video produced in the late-’80s imagines a predecessor to Siri – then called “Knowledge Navigator”. A bow-tied Bill Nye-the-Science-Guy-clone (bossed out in dad-swag attire) helps a Knowledge Navigator user work through his to-do-list, in an eerily Siri-like fashion.

With cartoons and movies of that time period bombarding our adolescent brains with visions of flying cars and moving sidewalks in the not-too-distant-future, at least the late Steve Jobs presented his view of our technological destiny with a little bit of follow-through.